Yes, you're absolutely right! TAngerine Dream did it with arpeggiators on parallel minor chord transpositions. But I'm doing it by first recording a minor chord in the looper (layering three rounds with the solo tone and moving to next note in the chord triad for each layer) and then I change the speed (pitch) of that loop while playing melody lines over it.

You gotta love TD, but yours sounds more organic IMHO.....maybe due to the way that you build it up. Great approach! And thanks for explaining how it all works. I'll have to try some of those ideas if I ever advance enough to get around to looping.

-Joseph

Yep, guitars n Sticks are organic by nature. With synths it is big challenge for he player to get an organic sound. Vangelis is the classic "organic synth tone" player IMHO. BTW I've also heard him use parallel minor chord transpositions in some of his tunes.

Ah, more food for thought. goin up for a latenite session-finally plugging in my loopers. and on this Thanksgiving i sucessfully deep-fryed 6 turkeys in 4 1/2 hrs w/out burning myself or the restaurant down. loop that!

I'd love to learn more about these parallel minor chord transpositions that you mentioned....is there a good link or something to hear more about this? I'm a HUGE Vangelis fan, BTW....so it would be great to know a bit more about this since it's part of his compositional style.

Thanks,
Joseph

Not that I know of, but I suggest you research it by playing it! There are many approaches but you can try mine:

Refer to the main key minor scale and when you change to another minor chord you simply alter some notes of the main key scale to match the notes of the new minor chord that are "out".

Here's an example:

1. Play a C minor chord and any melody lines that you think sounds good over the C mi. The typical scale might be C D D# F G G# Bb.

2. Change for a D# minor chord. If sticking with the same C mi scale some notes come out really poor. Those are the ones to be altered during the D# mi part. For example the fifth has to be lowered to tritonus but you still have the flat seventh and the minor third (the D#) as the "corner stones" for improvising (composing) over the D# minor chord in the key C minor. Ok this gives a possible scale or C D D# F Gb G# Bb. As you seen you only need to alter the fifth (down a half note) to match a D# mi chord in the key C minor. Quite simple isn't it! The challenge is to invent melodies that still keep on telling the same story while passing over the altering chords.

3. Keep on doing this to all minor chords while playing melodies that follow a compositional line and for every new chord you simply alter the original C mi scale to match the "out notes" of that chord. The simpler melodies you use the easer it gets to lead the melody storyline smoothly through the chords.

Oh, just one more chord example: I'm thinking about moving the C mi down to a G# mi. In the normal un-altered harmonic universe you would use a healthy G# major chord in the C minor key but since this is the parallel minor twilight zone we are left with G# minor instead and the interesting note here is of course the B! Why? Because the B note in a G# minor chord is its minor third and also because the note B in the key C minor is the dominant seventh - and as we all know that note is a common cliché in a lot of classical music. This offers the option to play melody lines that would be super simple meat-n-potato clichés in a classical piece but in the grey-zone of this "break-out" chord G# mi become something different.

Ok, third and last chord example: if you go down from C mi to Bb minor that chord will alter your C mi scale to use a flat second (maybe for a nice arabic flavour? Phrigging Phrygian!). Means you can throw in a C# in your melody playing.

Ouch, you just made my brain explode....but I'm definitely going to try this out (maybe on piano first). Thanks for the explanations and the examples! I'm going to have to understand probably by just playing it.

Maybe next time we can talk about Joe Satriani's Pitch Axis theory. =)

Thanks again,
Joseph

I had to Google that and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_axis_theory. Interesting, but I don't like that approach for theory; based on pointing out facts like that "C Ionian becomes D Dorian" etc etc (same notes become different scales in different keys - so what?). Moving from C to D just makes it harder to compare Ionian to Dorian in-my-humble-opinion. This seems like stuff left over from piano teaching where the student are taught to push keys over hearing music. What I would like to do instead is to take the C Ionian scale and compare it to the C Dorian, and vice versa all the way around. That seem much, much more useful as a theoretic tool to help your playing. I'd like to stay with the same root note - within the same tonal center - so I can really digest what colouring the different scales bring along.

I think that is the essence of the pitch axis theory. Basically you pick a single note (the "pitch axis") and then use it as a common tone in a sequence of chords and as the tonic in different modes for soloing.

That totally makes sense. I like your short description better than the one I found on Wikipedia!